and organization would occupy a distinct treatise. The Baron de Sainte
Croix has written two large volumes on the subject, and yet left it
unexhausted.

14. These two divisions of the Masonic Institution which were defined in
the 9th proposition, namely, the pure or primitive Freemasonry among the
Jewish descendants of the patriarchs, who are called, by way of
distinction, the Noachites, or descendants of Noah, because they had not
forgotten nor abandoned the teachings of their great ancestor, and the
spurious Freemasonry practised among the pagan nations, flowed down the
stream of time in parallel currents, often near together, but never
commingling.

15. But these two currents were not always to be kept apart, for,
springing, in the long anterior ages, from one common fountain,--that
ancient priesthood of whom I have already spoken in the 8th
proposition,--and then dividing into the pure and spurious Freemasonry of
antiquity, and remaining separated for centuries upon centuries, they at
length met at the building of the great temple of Jerusalem, and were
united, in the instance of the Israelites under King Solomon, and the
Tyrians under Hiram, King of Tyre, and Hiram Abif. The spurious
Freemasonry, it is true, did not then and there cease to exist. On the
contrary, it lasted for centuries subsequent to this period; for it was
not until long after, and in the reign of the Emperor Theodosius, that
the pagan Mysteries were finally and totally abolished. But by the union
of the Jewish or pure Freemasons and the Tyrian or spurious Freemasons at
Jerusalem, there was a mutual infusion of their respective doctrines and
ceremonies, which eventually terminated in the abolition of the two
distinctive systems and the establishment of a new one, that may be
considered as the immediate prototype of the present institution. Hence
many Masonic students, going no farther back in their investigations than
the facts announced in this 15th proposition, are content to find the
origin of Freemasonry at the temple of Solomon. But if my theory be
correct, the truth is, that it there received, not its birth, but only a
new modification of its character. The legend of the third degree--the
golden legend, the _legenda aurea_--of Masonry was there adopted by pure
Freemasonry, which before had no such legend, from spurious Freemasonry.
But the legend had existed under other names and forms, in all the
Mysteries, for ages before. The doctrine of immortality, which had
hitherto been taught by the Noachites simply as an abstract proposition,
was thenceforth to be inculcated by a symbolic lesson--the symbol of Hiram
the Builder was to become forever after the distinctive feature of
Freemasonry.

16. But another important modification was effected in the Masonic system
at the building of the temple. Previous to the union which then took
place, the pure Freemasonry of the Noachites had always been speculative,
but resembled the present organization in no other way than in the
cultivation of the same abstract principles of divine truth.

17. The Tyrians, on the contrary, were architects by profession, and, as
their leaders were disciples of the school of the spurious Freemasonry,
they, for the first time, at the temple of Solomon, when they united with
their Jewish contemporaries, infused into the speculative science, which
was practised by the latter, the elements of an operative art.

18. Therefore the system continued thenceforward, for ages, to present the
commingled elements of operative and speculative Masonry. We see this in
the _Collegia Fabrorum_, or Colleges of Artificers, first established at
Rome by Numa, and which were certainly of a Masonic form in their
organization; in the Jewish sect of the Essenes, who wrought as well as
prayed, and who are claimed to have been the descendants of the temple
builders, and also, and still more prominently, in the Travelling
Freemasons of the middle ages, who identify themselves by their very name
with their modern successors, and whose societies were composed of learned
men who thought and wrote, and of workmen who labored and built. And so
for a long time Freemasonry continued to be both operative and
speculative.

19. But another change was to be effected in the institution to make it
precisely what it now is, and, therefore, at a very recent period
(comparatively speaking), the operative feature was abandoned, and
Freemasonry became wholly speculative. The exact time of this change is
not left to conjecture. It took place in the reign of Queen Anne, of
England, in the beginning of the eighteenth century. Preston gives us the
very words of the decree which established this change, for he says that
at that time it was agreed to "that the privileges of Masonry should no
longer be restricted to operative Masons, but extend to men of various
professions, provided they were regularly approved and initiated into the
order."

The nineteen propositions here announced contain a brief but succinct view
of the progress of Freemasonry from its origin in the early ages of the
world, simply as a system of religious philosophy, through all the
modifications to which it was submitted in the Jewish and Gentile races,
until at length it was developed in its present perfected form. During all
this time it preserved unchangeably certain features that may hence be
considered as its specific characteristics, by which it has always been
distinguished from every other contemporaneous association, however such
association may have simulated it in outward form. These characteristics
are, first, the doctrines which it has constantly taught, namely, that of
the unity of God and that of the immortality of the soul; and, secondly,
the manner in which these doctrines have been taught, namely, by symbols
and allegories.

Taking these characteristics as the exponents of what Freemasonry is, we
cannot help arriving at the conclusion that the speculative Masonry of the
present day exhibits abundant evidence of the identity of its origin with
the spurious Freemasonry of the ante-Solomonic period, both systems coming
from the same pure source, but the one always preserving, and the other